Tokugawa Shogunate

The Tokugawa Shogunate was a shogunate led by the Tokugawa clan from 1603 to 1868, reigning for exactly 265 years. It was founded by Ieyasu Tokugawa after victory at the Battle of Sekigahara, where he crushed his Toyotomi opponents, and oversaw years of peace.

History
The Tokugawa clan of Mikawa Province were loyal to the Oda clan from 1562, after Nobunaga Oda took Ieyasu Tokugawa into his clan and let him retake Mikawa Province from the Imagawa clan. In 1582, when Nobunaga was slain, the Tokugawa were some of the first to get involved in the succession crisis, fighting the Toyotomi clan of Hideyoshi Hashiba. Backed by Nobukatsu Oda, they were given a legitimate claim. However, in 1584, they were defeated at the Battle of Komaki-Nagakute by Hideyoshi, who took the Tokugawas in as vassals. Ieyasu remained an ally of the Toyotomi until Hideyoshi's death in 1598, when Ieyasu again tried to claim succession. He crushed the Toyotomi at the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600, and took the shogunate over in 1603.

From 1603 to 1868, peace was common in Japan. There were rare conflicts, such as the Toyotomi peasant rebellion in Osaka Castle in 1615 led by Hideyoshi's son Hideyori Toyotomi, which was brutally crushed. In 1868, the shogunate was overthrown by the Tosa, Choshu, and Satsuma clans, who reinstated Imperial authority over the country. Yoshinobu Tokugawa, the last Shogun, put up a good fight alongside the Aizu, Nagaoka, and Jozai clans, but their allies in France were outmatched by the Imperial allies of Great Britain, who gave them Gatling Guns and Armstrong Guns, which mowed down the Samurai. At last, the Fall of the Samurai was at hand.